South Beach

We have moved south to Miami, Fl, where we plan to spend a week visiting some of the spots we enjoyed while we lived here for a year. We have not been back in four years, and already remembering some of the less pleasant parts of our stay. Traffic remains horrendous and on this early November day the temperature reached 88 degrees and the humidity steady at near 100 percent.

Despite these issues, we headed to South Beach to enjoy our second favorite pizza in the world at a place on Lincoln road called Spris. Our first choice for pizza is in a town called Nidri on a small Greek Island , but that seems a bit far to go for lunch-even while we are in the travel mode. I am glad to report that the pizza was as good as we remembered and the ladies fashion, while strolling this well known street, still remains entertaining while waiting to be served.

No visit would be complete without walks on the beach, seeing the classic art deco buildings and, of course, the many different people walking the streets.

It's a jungle out there

We decided to make one last tourist trip before leaving central Florida for the Miami area. Highlands Hammock State Park is one of the oldest of the state parks, with the aim of preserving as much of the historic natural environment as possible. Here you can walk numerous trails that allow you to view native land forms from swamp to woodland. The oldest tree in the park is over 1000 years old. Before it became a state park, it had been settled by a number of farming families. One of the first was a farmer who cleared a large section of the swamp and woods to start and orange grove. All evidence of his efforts have been lost accept for many wild orange trees that can be seen as you hike the trails.

During the great depression, the park was home to a CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) camp that made significant improvements to the park and surrounding areas. There are still two CCC build buildings in the park and one of them contains a museum dedicated to the local CCC history. While many people are aware of the contributions that the CCC made to this country, I wonder how many are also aware of the risks involved in this work. I learned here that 228 CCC members lost their lives at three camps in the Florida Keys in a 1935 hurricane. Many of these men were WWI veterans.

It is a great park for hiking and biking and learning a few things.

Happy Birthday- Katie

Today is our youngest daughters 25th birthday! That seems to be some kind of milestone. Perhaps that is more about our age than hers, but we thought it worth noting and will start a new tradition if we keep this blog up long enough. So for the other two girls, perhaps a bribe may be in order before we select your pictures.

Happy Birthday Katie!!

The Ringling Bros. Circus

Sarasota, FL is a growing and pleasant community on the Gulf of Mexico and happens to be home to the John and Mable Ringling Art and Circus Museums, along with the Mansion they built in 1920’s. While we did not know about the museums or the mansion before arriving in the area, I was vaguely aware that the Ringling Bros. Circus wintered in the area during it heydays.

www.ringling.org

Before visiting the museum compound, we took a quick tour of the waterfront and found a sculpture remembering the sacrifices of many people during WWII. It is called the “Unconditional Surrender”. It sits in a small park on the Bay for relaxing and watching the activity taking place on the water. We also took a tour of the downtown area and enjoyed a good meal in one of the many restaurants to be found there.

John Ringling, who owned the circus along with his three brothers, thought that the Sarasota area was the place to be and purchased some waterfront property in 1913 and later added to that property and decided to build his dream home on that site in 1924. He and his wife Mable became very involved in local society and their new home became the center of the local social scene.

The Ringling’s did very well with the circus and managed to collect a significant number of art pieces and eventually built a museum on the property to hold their collection. After his death in 1936, the entire estate was donated to the state of Florida and eventually came under the control of the Florida State University. The museum is considered to be among the best in the country. Eventually, a Circus Museum was added and finally a learning center that was the sole effort of Howard Tibbals.

The Museum of Art has a large collection of European artists, with a particularly large amount of Rubens’ works. It is well worth the visit. We also enjoyed the Circus Museum collection of Ringling Bros. equipment and stories which provides a great deal of information on the history and complexity of the operation. It chronicles the circus from its beginnings to the end of the outdoors Big Top era in 1956, when the modern amusements made this form of entertainment less attractive. At its peak, the circus would travel with over 1300 employees and hundreds of animals and sufficient equipment to be able to be self sufficient where ever it traveled. This included over 140 railroad cars and all the necessities of a small town. When set up, the Circus covered over 20 acres of ground.

The Circus learning center was completed in 2005 and consists of a complete model of a typical large circus (modeled on the Ringling Bros. Circus) and has amazingly detailed models of all phrases of circus life. Howard Tibbals worked on this project over a period of 50 years and culminated in the learning center, where it took a full year to install all the models in the center.

As part of your entrance fee, you also may tour the Ringling Mansion and hear additional information on the life and times of the John Ringling family. The mansion is in a great location. Some might say that the decorative style was a bit garish, but then they were circus folks. I personally could get use to spending lots of the time on the waterfront veranda.

We spent four hours on the grounds and that was barely enough time to see it all.

Solomon's Castle

7 November 2008
As the brochure promised, in the middle of central Florida cattle and horse country, we did find a rather unusual castle. It is located in a low lying landscape and is not what one might generally expect in a castle. It is owned by an artist who specializes in objects made from scrap. All of his art and much of the castle is made from recycled materials. He does not sell the pieces that he creates but keeps them in the castle and charges us crazy tourists to take a tour.

www.solomonscastle.com

This is totally a family operation with his daughter and son-in law, with the help of the grandchildren, running the onsite restaurant and gift shop and his significant other and himself handling the tours and various other duties. The castle sits on 100 acres that they purchased some years ago on a spring visit and did not find out about the flooding from the nearby river until their first summer rainy season. They smile and say there is still a mystery surrounding the disappearance of their former real estate agent.

The tour is filled with funny puns and stories of how the various pieces were created and where the scrap material came from along with how many oil barrels were used in the different items. The castle itself is a wood framed structure and its outer shell is totally made from used aluminum printing sheets from the local newspaper. It was noted that if these sheets were removed from the castle, it was like a time capsule of the local history on the reverse side where the news could still be read. The main rooms of the castle are used to display Howard Solomon’s art and some of that created by his friends. The remainder of the first floor contains the general living spaces of the artist, with a master and guest bedroom on the second floor. For those daring enough to spend the night in this remote and exotic place, there is a B&B room in the back of the castle.

There is a ship in a moat (restaurant) along with out buildings and a new project of creating a replica of the Alamo in San Antonio. You will have to ask Howard why. There are also a number of walking paths to enjoy the “estate”.

I need to explain the picture of the Red Hat Ladies group. As we were riding o
ut to the castle to be there at opening time ,we were (wrongly) wondering how few visitors they might get to this remote location. When we arrived, we found the 58 ladies waiting for their tour and were told yet another bus was due in a few hours. This immediately made me wonder how bad the economy really was and how bored so many people were. I had a great time chatting with these ladies and told them if they would pose for a picture, I would make them famous. This is the best I can do. In the end, while we were there, we shared the estate with at least several hundred people. On our tour, we were joined by a very nice lady, much older than me, who had spent 19 years as a missionary nurse in Africa and was now enjoying additional time in the sun in south Florida.

It is an unusual but fun place to visit and we had a very nice lunch under the old oaks.